Author: Raphael Awen

Ascension/Divine Union Teacher. Parts/Soul Aspects Facilitator. Soul Scribe.

Being Vulnerably On The Altar Of Our Humanity And Our Divinity

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man-praying-silhouette1

By Wayne Vriend

Recently, part of me was feeling anxiety about money feeling tight, and I could feel initially the background emotional tension around it. This same part of me has also been deeply feeling the very edge of deep change that we are on now in our world, and of course anxiety about how that will affect Jillian and I personally as it plays out.

I connected with this part of me through a journaling dialogue on pen and paper and felt its desire to reach out to the Divine Mother for guidance, I received the following guidance from the Divine Mother to this part of me:

“You must be willing to feel how all of life is vulnerable. Life is powerful, alive, amazing, and also vulnerable. Of course you feel anxiety in life. It is part of life. The stress comes when you are not willing or able to feel that life is vulnerable. You need the freedom to say ‘I feel afraid,’ when you feel that way, and recognize when you do. There are no guarantees. There is fear; there is desire; there is you and there is me.

THAT is why living life with your heart open is so courageous. You feel yourself, instead of medicating over your desires and hopes and fears. You tremble in the arms of me, Mother, if that is what you need to do. You curl up and ache and bawl on the floor if that is what comes. You have your own private and manageable nervous breakdown right there. You are all alone in one way and yet so held and loved, like you’ve never known, and like you cannot ever forget.

Life re-arises and comes back into focus, and even with strength and power, but these are not things you use to medicate the feelings of life’s never ending vulnerability, but instead feel your share in being unalterably on the altar of humanity and Divinity at the same time.”

This part of me felt so relieved and encouraged to feel the aliveness that comes from not suppressing vulnerable feelings and instead embracing them, owning them and making them mine. I have and get to play with power, and creativity, and purpose, but inside of a container of need and dependence and never ending reality of being a beloved child of my Divine parents.

Visit soulfullheart.com for more articles and information about the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life.

Accepting Change As The Only Constant

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Light bulb

By Wayne Vriend

I’ve been digesting the outrageous news this week: that the government of Cyprus,  an island country in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, is in cahoots with the European Union this week to essentially steal 7% to 10% of people’s savings from their bank accounts. The German leaders actually advocated for taking 40%. I’m sure it’s not the first time, and surely not the last, but things are heating up in our global society. My sense is that this year is a tipping point. The pace of the changes seems so swift on one level, and so slow on another.

Many of us are simply keeping our eyes on the busyness and content of our time and energy demanding lifestyles, and pass off these mildly troubling stories in the news as stuff beyond our control. We say to ourselves, ‘I have plenty to manage here right now, I couldn’t get worked up about this if I tried.’

But, I invite you to ask yourself: What is my relationship to change? How will I be affected by global changes that I can’t control? And, just what do I ‘control’ in relationship to change?

Take a look at the nature of the changes our global society is undergoing. Crisis in capitalism is a big one, with simply too much debt and pretense toppling the money systems, and the ever increasing wealth gap between those living in riches and those living in scarcity. Then there is the related crisis in climate change and global warming. The approaching end of fossil fuels. Poor health where starvation and obesity occur in the same body….just to name a few. Something is unmistakably dying.

Relating to these changes as somehow global, rather than personal, comes from denying our fundamental interconnectedness with everything. People are dying there, not here. There is choking smog in Beijing, not here. That nuclear disaster is on the other side of the planet. That’s like saying, my liver is in pain and having a bad day, but I’m doing fine. If you are alive, you are undergoing and impacted by fundamental change, whether you are conscious of it or not.

The responsible and conscious question is not how can I avoid change, but how can I avoid the pain of being asleep and unprepared emotionally to the changes that are going on around me? How can I learn, grow, and heal and assist others in doing the same, in the midst of these sweeping changes?

You may feel stuck in an immovable lifestyle where it feels like time is a rare commodity. You may feel overworked, under-rested, where your bodies health ‘is what it is,’ and doesn’t feel like any real change is within reach, where friendships ‘are what they are,’ where sex is what it is, and you couldn’t begin to even imagine how they could be meaningfully different. This flat feeling about your life is actually a healthy one, a sign that something is actually working perfectly. You are living in a carefully crafted and chosen way of life, where even your lack of consciousness up until now is an aspect of the necessary plan.

Moving from feeling flat and deeply in survival mode to feeling alive, energized, and experiencing desire, and true pleasure in our lives, is about feeling both how incredibly fast and how incredibly slow the changes actually are. In nature, we see trees standing up for 500 years and lightning that strikes them down in one second. Both are true. Some things about your life will persist until the end of your life, other things will fall away in a surprising moment of swift change.

How you relate to change, rather than seeking to avoid it, is where you have power and soft control. Fearing running out of money to support your current lifestyle and having to face an uncomfortable feeling of low self worth tied to inadequacy can either be an attempt fueling the status quo in your life or it can be a path to letting in healthy change. Whether we are in ‘resistance to change mode’ or ‘letting in change mode’, makes all the difference in the inevitable changes that are coming our way.

In the natural cycles of nature and seasons, If something is dying, that always means that something is being born. Old is always giving way to new. It’s true of your life right now. Your life right now, how it feels to be you, inside of your body, inside of your beliefs and outlook, what you feel about others, about the Divine, about yourself…… is all to do with what you have encountered up until now.

What are you feeling as you read my words? Do they resonate with something inside of you? Do they call out to you to feel deeper? Do they call out to you to connect with me, or to connect with a part of yourself that you haven’t up until now? Are they timely to an answer you have been seeking? This is the change that is under your feet right now, that won’t ever stop. Also, what gives us courage to let in change is to feel what doesn’t change, and to let more of that into your consciousness. Love from the divine, from the universe, and from my dog (who seems to beat me most days on being connected to what is) allows me to find courage to live into and accept change as the only constant in my life.

Visit soulfullheart.com for more articles and information about the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life.

A Son’s Ending, A Man’s Beginning

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Male By Birth; Men By Journey

By Wayne Vriend

I originally wrote the following piece in March, 2010, and published it on a previous blog. I wanted to share it again as healing the wounds between men and their fathers (whether possible in person or in spirit) is so foundational and critical to our healing into authentic male expression.

***

It had been over two and half years and I had not been back since the day of the funeral, until today.

I took myself, my backpack, my umbrella and a piece of plastic to sit on and set myself down, right on top of the grave. I was reminded of the times I was too young to remember of sitting on Dad’s stomach. I felt welcome and belonging here now. I snugged my umbrella over me as the rain was lightly falling.

I unloaded the green stemmed purple crocus potted plant with the fuchsia wrapping, that I had purchased on the way out, in front of the headstone. The light rain was opening their blooms. The colors of it all fit well with the maroon color of the headstone, which I took in for the first time. The front read simply ‘VRIEND,’ and on top ‘Jim Vriend 1934-2007,’ and ‘safe now in the arms of Jesus,’ and ‘Loving husband, father and grandfather.’

I looked at the photo of my dad in his early seventies attached to the wrought iron prop. He had bright blue eyes and a boyish alive playful happiness. Here is where we rested his body, committed it back to the earth, in solemnity, in ritual, with hymns of the church and a homily of remembrance. We all stood that day. Today, I sat down, on the earth, and remained there for the better part of two hours.

My father had attended church every week of his life, and felt a palpable connection to God, and remained his entire life not too far from the safety and comfort of his family upbringing. I’d often chafed with him in my desire and decision to explore beyond the bounds of safety. I’d often tried to be nice and not so antagonistic and hoped in exchange that he’d see my soul for who I am, in the hope I could see more of myself. I always felt crazy for not being able to overcome the wall between us.

Today, however, I felt the wall was dissolved between us, like it had simply never been.

I breathed in and out the incense I had lit that was wafting in my face. I read aloud the words again before me: ‘Safe in the arms of Jesus.’  I said, “Dad, how I longed to feel safe in your arms.”  His pained eyes felt my pain, and bouncing shoulder sobs shook me. My pain mingled with his pain for the joy he missed in not knowing me in this way, and for his not being known by his father in this way.

For the first time, the anguish became ours.

I shared with him a piece of treasured driftwood I brought and a jade stone, both of which reminded me of his love and familiarity for the earth. He accepted them with an ocean of gratitude, and we shared eye to eye tears over the gifts we had not up until now been permitted to give and receive.

The rain subsided along with my tears and I set aside my umbrella and jacket.  I said to the spirit of my father, “Dad, so much of my life, even to this day, has been shaped by the attempt at trying to feel your deep approval, your love, and admiration.”

He paused, and then replied in a cadence and tone that contained the world, “Son, I can tell you with everything that I am now, I have never ever met a man that I esteem higher than you, in fact you are truly my hero.” The genuineness of his heart and words I ingested easily, and my tears now were of deep gratitude.

The differences in our beliefs and choices in so many areas of life did not even require a debriefing here in the domain of heart and spirit where beliefs often only serve as a wall of protection and alienation.

I paused to drink some of the coffee and eat the bar I had brought with me, not wanting the host in him to fuss.

Eventually I said, through tears, “Dad, I’ll be 49 this year. I’m again embracing more change, and letting go of securities. I know I need to keep food on the table, but living for a job, and a mortgage is not what I am here for. I need to find new courage and I want to ask your help. Dad, will you help me?’

I waited until I felt his response and then let my voice carry his voice through mine, “Son, I would be so honored, and I will do everything in my power to show you, to guide you, to cheer you on in the choices you make.” In the tears that wouldn’t stop, I was able to feel some of the reason we’d been so unable to connect in this life and to give way to the connection I’d need with him now.

The coffee was moving through me, and I didn’t think the cemetery workers across the way would have an issue with me taking a side trip to the bushes. I relieved myself and returned and sat down again, digesting all that had moved in a matter of minutes.

My last visit with my father had been in the hospital, with warm smiles, small talk that differed little from any other visit, and no mention of his soon passing. I felt his true joy at seeing me. The young boy in me was struck by the weakness in his body and the bruising on his arms and legs, a sad contrast from the man I had always admired for his strength. Then his tone and focus changed, sitting up in his bed and with fore finger tapping the hospital table like a pulpit, he exclaimed, “I’m not the one who instituted the family,” reminding me what the Bible teaches about family, and referring to my recent distance from family. I knew he meant well, but I felt the gulf between us and our values (since I had left Christianity a few years earlier along with my marriage) as uncrossable. I kept the visit short and we exchanged back tapping hugs, “I love you,” and “I love you too.” And, I left, aching for so much more.

Here though, perched on his grave, there was no awkwardness, no taboo subjects, no inabilities to simply ask for what we wanted from each other, no fear of our angst, no withholding of our forgiveness and our apologies. There was just love that filled the space that gave rise and fall to words to assist the love.

It was evident we had both taken in all we could.

I remembered singing his favorite hymn “Amazing Grace” at the funeral. I sang a few lines now as I gathered up my things and got up. As I took in the scene and caught my breath, I realized that my dad and I had just met for the first time. I said to him, “Yeah, Dad, grace really is amazing.’

Visit soulfullheart.com for more articles and information about the SoulFullHeart Way Of Experiencing Life.

Entering and Leaving: In The Birth Canal

Published on by Raphael Awen2 Comments
Photo By Wayne Vriend
Photo By Wayne Vriend

By Wayne Vriend

Mike, whose energy reminded me of a slick Amway promoter, was the recently hired Western Canada Regional Manager for a company boasting to be the largest of its kind in Canada. While driving home, I reluctantly picked up his call after having just pulled up stakes mid way through on a paint job for this company. This is something that I had never even thought of doing in my previous 23 years long subcontracting relationship with the company.

Earlier in the day, I had decided and informed the company that I would not complete a big deadline job unless some reasonable payment was made. I also made this decision after hearing that many other subcontractors and even material suppliers were getting paid very late. Due to this, the job was poorly coordinated, running behind, and contained an energy of chaos, anxiety, and disconnect.

“Hi Wayne, it’s Mike. I also have Darren on the line,” he said, in a voice too loud, too smooth, and too enthusiastic for the situation.  “I said to Darren, let’s get Wayne on the line and see if we can clear this up. I think your invoices just have some dates confused in our system and that should take care of things.”

I sighed inwardly at his assumption. “No, Mike, I checked all of our invoices over carefully with your accounting department months ago. They are correct in your system and they do, in fact, go back over 4 months”

Then, he changed his tack. Softening his voice a little, he said, “Wayne, I’m going to see if I can get you all of this money from our treasury department right away. It may take me a few days though. Would you be willing in the meantime, in good faith in our company, to continue so we can get these people moved back into their home?”

It wasn’t so easy to find my words inside of this barrage of tones and words: a promise to go and get my money from the difficult and elusive treasury department; an appeal to my sense of good faith; and care for others: getting the homeowners moved back into their home.

I managed to find my response after fumbling at first around with my words. “No, MIke, I’m not comfortable with that and it just doesn’t feel self loving to do that. It’s been several broken promises.”

The job was going sideways fast anyway. Material suppliers, subcontractors and employees alike waiting on the sidelines for a corporate nation-wide general contracting company and it’s opaque layers of management and hedge fund ownership to find some heart and soul, and actually lead, or actually care.

When the Titanic hit the iceberg a 101 years ago, there were two precious hours of choice and action time before it finally sunk to the bottom of the ocean. The gravitational pull of denial, and buying into the status quo answer of ‘this ship is unsinkable’, were in fact what caused a much greater loss of life. Those who came to their senses early in the first hour made all the difference, for themselves and for others.

We are in such a time. It is evident wherever you look. My story from this week is not unique.

Our grand capitalist systems; our social systems; our religious and spiritual systems: these that are so dear to our false selves and have enjoyed such huge buy ins from so many, for so long; all these have struck an iceberg. These systems, that once felt so much like home, that animated us, are now in slow motion collapse. Make no mistake, as Captain Smith said so plainly in the movie in response to Rose’s inquiry about their fate; ‘The ship will sink.’

It gets real clear, on a sinking ship, once you’ve accepted what moments ago felt unbelievable even to you, that your first responsibility is to save lives, including your own. What are you choosing today? What are you trusting in today? How do you propose to care for anyone else while denying your first responsibility; to truly care for yourself?

The iceberg is not the problem. The poor design is not the problem. It is all a huge and unexpected gift to us, if we can only surrender to the point of the collapse: being prepared by the circumstance itself to enter our next phase of life.

Our most authentic self is mid stream in the birth canal, between the collapsing story and the rise of a new story, waiting to be born. In order for that to happen, we are being invited to leave the false self systems that we once held so dear and enter into an arising birthing process.  We can’t know what our new self will look like, we can only trust that what we were previously invested in is now complete in it’s purpose to bring us to a deeper choice point and truer reflection of who we were meant to be.

Visit soulfullheart.com for more articles and information about the SoulFullHeart Way of Life.

Crisis Of The Modern Male: Urgency For Kings

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Photo Taken by Michael Rowley
Photo Taken by Michael Rowley

By Wayne Vriend

What does manhood look like now, in these modern times?

What is it? How does it express? What does a deep and genuine self worth look like in a male expression?

Men aren’t generally given to asking such questions. It isn’t part of the current male persona. I want to ask the men I encounter: ‘Are you too busy subscribing to others’ ideas of maleness that you don’t have the time, energy, desire, or imagination to find your own?’

It is only our false selves who fear inquiring about whether our masculine expression is real or not. To ask the question is to be open to finding something lacking or missing and false selves have a hard time with that, given as they are to making do and finding a way. Our authentic self however, has no such judgments, or fears of finding something lacking or missing, but rather welcomes it as part of self loving discovery and change. The authentic self accepts how we were in life up until present time as part of our sacred process and journey.

In past times and cultures, one of the treasured male stories was to die in battle. Dying while fighting for a just cause was the ultimate bestowal of honor. A current honor story for men in the western world is career and home ownership. Men have always been afraid of being without a male story to live into and attempt to embody.

We are in a time of the ‘changing of the story,’ where our old stories are losing their appeal and coming apart at the seams, and new stories are forming, but not solidly here yet. Soulfullheart desires to be a conscious part of that coalescing into people’s lives.

Stand in front of a magazine stand and see for yourself. Fitness, photography, news, sailing, sports, technology, travel, architecture, cars, with sex sprinkled throughout, and porn at the back. All of it is an appeal to the ache in men to find male expression, male power, male passion, male-ness, and a stiff cock. It wouldn’t sell if there wasn’t a need.

Every man walking around has a boy part inside seeking his way home, to himself, to truly becoming a man. The ones who can admit that are actually our deepest current leaders of true masculine expression.

We ache for it, but our false selves also deeply fear what happens when just one man actually openly admits he’s looking for it, let alone finds some of it. The world doesn’t remain the same and it freaks out the powers that be in his world. He isn’t so predictable any more. He surely is far less controllable, way less nice, and things may in fact get messy before they get better.

And none of us can do this in a vacuum, without something to press against, without some story to affect, without something at stake. It is why you are here. Your world will change. Relationships will change. You will change.

In the archetypal movie Braveheart, William Wallace fires up his troops at the edge of the battle, with the choice between their lives or their freedom; both of which were at stake; both of which provided a deep sense of meaning to fight for. What is different today is that we have been lulled to sleep awash in freedoms and with no immediate threat to our lives.

Where’s the meaningful fight now?

What have you out of fear given up on? What power have you left laying around for manipulative and insecure men to gather up and use against you? What is it that you really want, standing in front of that magazine rack, attending that church, being in that corporate setting, bellied up to that bar, attending that family gathering? Could you say what you are feeling to those around you, and see where it takes you?

What is being asked for by the universe, by the Divine, in men is to cease from joining and giving allegiance to anything, be it an army, a church, a country, a family – any cult-ure where you are required to give over your power and autonomy to prop up someone else’s picture of manhood. You will only ensure that you will never find your own. For many men, that is the point. They are afraid of finding their own manhood. They are afraid to admit it. They’re afraid of of the journey it will take. They are afraid of themselves, and for good reason. They are truly powerful!

You already are a man. You are just still searching for what that means. Giving your authority away to an outside-of-you group, in exchange for some reflected pittance of your own power is fast becoming a done deal. The more we attempt to energize this gasping for breath story, the faster will be its demise.

For the moment, the new emerging story has more to do with letting go of that which we know isn’t us in order to make room to discover what it is. We will naturally go on to embody these new stories, but for now, we will need to find a grace to be with a feeling of vacancy. This however is not a vacuum at all, but a pregnant alchemy of something new seeking a critical mass in our collective consciousness.

SoulFullHeart Men’s Circle is a group of men called together by me, Wayne Vriend, to be a new exploration of what it means to be male, to be alive, and to be expressing that in the world. If this calls out to you, I invite you to join us. And, if you know men who would resonate with this message, please forward this blog to them.

​Visit soulfullheart.com for more articles and information about the SoulFullHeart healing process.

Being In Want

Published on by Raphael Awen1 Comment

beinginwant

By Wayne Vriend

Your very first experience as a human being was a want.

I want, therefore I am.

We have wants together, therefore we are in relationship.

No wants, no deal.

If part of me can minimize or camouflage my wants, then what I call ‘I’ has just shifted to a freshly launched false version of me. An inauthentic stand-in of my real me. My reality begins an epic, but unnoticed shift, from the wonder world of stunning awe, wonder and creative imagination to scarcity, fear, routine, and rules. A staggering fall from grace, that has and continues to spawn and be the foundation of entire religions and cultures.

My false selves’ biggest treasures slowly become the adaptations that help me survive this loss of a lifetime and only serve to further my suffering. My false self can put my life on autopilot and just copy what seems to work for most. Coming from this place, my false self doesn’t need much at all from you, from God or from myself, for that matter.

Wanting, though, is what makes us alive. Minimizing and camouflaging our wants is slow motion suicide. Being in want returns us, slowly but surely, to our authentic selves.

Wanting makes me write this and wanting makes you read this.

Being in real want is so vulnerable. In growing up, we are soon trained to camouflage our wants. Raw, naked, and powerful want was frowned upon. We were taught by others who had long ago grown afraid of their wants and who also demanded our complicity in the great lie, that we could get hurt beyond repair by being too plain about what we wanted. We found make do ways to get our needs met in underground and deceptive ways, no longer protesting good enough, and with huge downsides, that strangely didn’t feel so unbearable.

This cuts us off from the truest thing about ourselves; being in familiar contact with what we wanted.

I wanted meaningful connection with friends; my false self settled for polite conversation and catching up over coffee. I wanted to feel the Divine loving me; my false self settled for the illusion of earning God’s favour. I wanted to be seen and really known by my former mate; my false self settled for caretaking her and not being called out of my disconnect. I wanted to be noticed and seen;  my false self settled for people pleasing. I wanted true family; my false self settled for a place for it to be well liked. I wanted real and passionate mentors; my false self settled for people who let me be associated with them because I reflected well on them. I wanted my self; my false self settled for not wanting.

Asking the question, with as much courage and honesty as we can muster, ‘what is it that I really want?,’ is our great quest. Hence the ‘question.’

Following the answer we receive, no matter how small, will lead us back to our real self – our true, safely buried, and still breathing authentic self.

I want and need and desire to get to know and serve that real you.

I refuse to settle for less any more. How about you?

​Visit SoulFullHeart.com for more articles and information about the SoulFullHeart Healing Process.

What does your real power and bigness look like?

Published on by Raphael AwenLeave a comment

By Wayne Vriend

Have you ever felt that a smaller or lesser version of you is living your life? (By smaller or lesser, I don’t mean bad or wrong, but rather lacking in your power and bigness.)

Why can’t you find friends to whom you don’t feel so invisible around?

Why does your family culture seem so impenetrable to your changing values?

Why do you remain in relationships that you know have a high degree of toxicity?

Why have you been unable to find a more fulfilling way to earn money in the world?

If the above questions don’t feel like the ones you ask about your life, then you have either found and healed your way to a really rare healthy life configuration, or it’s a smaller version of you who is doing the assessing.

A smaller version of you, made up of specific parts of you, are what does life until a you arises to alleviate them of the strategized way of doing your life that they have learned to do, in your absence. Up till now.

This smaller version of you is looking for a good enough status quo kind of equilibrium with which to survive, and especially to avoid rejection and pain. This applies if you are outwardly struggling in life or considered successful and well adapted. This smaller version of you is very predisposed to only taking the safest of risks, which are hardly risks at all, and has become expert in living out of preapproved cultural norms. This you won’t allow you to show up in your real and vulnerable feelings for fear that if that you gets rejected, there is no stand in double to take it’s place. Even your expressions that you consider authentic and real are channelled through this managed bureaucracy of you to significantly tone down the risks, and to strategize the ‘realness.’

The smaller version of you is run by what we call the Prime Monarch part of you, (ultimately motivated by love, but compromised by life’s hardening experiences) and it is in charge of the parts of you who had to be suppressed inside of you for your intact functioning. The vulnerable and afraid you; the magical you; the you who still only knows how to truly play; all had to be suppressed as you grew ‘up.’

And given the territory; and given the lack of a present you who could relieve this smaller version of you; this you is to be honored and thanked. It found a way. It showed up.

The difficulty though is this new you arising with these deeper assessment questions that you maybe didn’t even notice on your radar much before are now growing in your awareness. This new you begins with emerging desire, honesty, needs, advocacy, dissatisfaction, and self love to become a presence in your ‘you’ stream.

What would your real power and bigness look like if it manifested in your life and relationships and decisions? You might be able to get whiffs of it, but you don’t really know, do you?

Of course you don’t. You haven’t lived your way there, which is the only way to ever arrive and keep arriving there. There is no one size fits all template of what bigness looks and feels like. There are some very refreshing common earmarks, but the way they show up and express in your life are as diverse as fingerprints and snowflakes.

So the real question then is something like this: ‘How could the life I’m living, the one I find myself in, actually lead me to more and more of my real self, instead of fortifying my false self?’

That question in itself is only one that an emerging real self could ask. The smaller version of you simply can’t entertain such a question. It can embrace self improvement, and fixing problems, but not the task of emotional authentication.

I feel the smaller part of myself right now, as I write this, wondering if it’s OK to be this big, to be this authoritative sounding, to say we have solutions, and also wondering where this will lead, away from my own current familiar. ‘Who’s going to look after me?’ he asks. The small part of ourselves is not bad, or a drag. They feel insecure because their needs and vulnerability is real, and they need a larger us, who is willing to feel them and respond, rather than suppress and power through.

Soulfullheart, as a process (not to be mistaken with a therapy), was created for people who are at this stage of awareness, and desire, and frustration – all necessary ingredients to making the choice to find and discover and heal your way to your real you. The SFH process derives its’ value from people like you who feel called to themselves to undertake it.

If this article resonates inside of you as speaking your truth, I promise you, that your real you is waiting and longing for you to take the next step into your bigness, and begin your Soulfullheart process.

Please contact me, Wayne or my wife Jillian for a free intro into where you could go from here.

Visit soulfullheart.com for more articles and information about the SoulFullHeart healing process.

Suffering From SPD (Single Personality Disorder)?

Published on by Raphael Awen2 Comments

By Raphael Awen

(Raphael’s note: I’m letting my inner teenage part express in this blog entry. His name is Marvin, and he seeks aliveness and meaning with others, especially around creative expression.)

“Hey Hon, do you wanna do that hike today?” she asked.

“ah…I don’t know….,” He said flatly.

“Or is today better to do that gardening? We got all the stuff for it?” She offered, looking at himfor connection.

“hmmm,” he toned back non-committally.

“Is there anything you’d like to do today, we haven’t had much time together for a while?”

He shrugged back with a facial grimace.

——  —–  —–

Have you ever been in a conversation that goes something like that? Sure, you have right? On both sides of the conversation probably.

But, have you ever been in a conversation where you or the person you are speaking with instead of being flat, replies to an offer with a thoughtful pause and says open-endedly, “Well,…. part of me does, ……and part of me doesn’t.”

Isn’t that way more refreshing, and honest? You can go somewhere with that response. It acknowledges that we all experience a push pull inside of ourselves.

—–  —–  —–

‘Single Personality Disorder (SPD):’ The resulting compounding stress in one’s life from the delusion that everything they think, say and feel comes from one personality source inside of them.

‘Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD):’ The stress of knowing and experiencing that you are more than one, but that there isn’t a healthy you at home who can hold, love, and reparent the various parts of you.

Seeing ourselves as made up of parts or subpersonalities, as it has been called, breathes so much relief. I can genuinely be drawn to something inside of myself and have a repulsion to it at the same time. I can like you and hate things about you at the same time. I can be majorly motivated towards something and lose the motivation in a heartbeat?

Part of me may definitely dislike the roller coaster effect of one part feeling something while another (or many others) feel something else. This is the part who seeks to appear “put together” to others who seem to be quite put together, while another part of me would so prefer to just check out from it all.

I’m curious, does that feel true for you too?

Soulfullheart offers a process where you can both get to know the various parts of you as well as be the kind and loving parent that your parts need to heal.

Visit soulfullheartwayoflife.com for more articles and information about the SoulFullHeart healing process.

Opening Our Blind Eyes

Published on by Raphael Awen3 Comments

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By Wayne Vriend

Is it possible that there are things you cannot see right now?

How often are you moved to tears at the wonder and complexity of your physical body for instance?

How often do you feel a love presence coming to you from yourself, or from the Divine, or from another person in your life, to the point of feeling overwhelmed by the love?

If you’re like me, it’s not as often as you’d like.

Could it be that our eyes, our receptors of reality, have been turned down to a frequency that we can bear? To a lower frequency that matches our wounded experiences of this life, and past lives, up till now?

If your answer is ‘yes’ to my question, let me ask you my next question.

What would it take to open our eyes? That is to increase the frequency our eyes transmit and receive at?

My experience is that it takes a process of healing those past wounds. It takes an emotional authentication process, called life, a drama story played out in the real time of your life that allows for the feeling and healing of the past wounds, and embraces and lets in a new space for the new arising story, your unfolding story. It takes feeling the parts of us that are afraid to see yet ache for clearer vision at the same time.

If your answer is ‘no’ to my question about the possibility of there being so much more to see that you have seen till now, then let me ask you one more question.

Is the reason you are still breathing have something to do with proving that your present level of seeing is your highest reality? To prove that you are as attained as possible in this present moment?

I feel a presence in my life that wants to accelerate my ability to let in my next phase. What is my next step in a deeper sense of play, of passion, and of seeing? For me, I sense it is deeply about my own personal journey to see more and help others that ache to see more. I feel it will be about continuing to expand my work in Soulfullheart to individuals and also about speaking to groups about what I see, and how that relates to what they want to see and share . It seems simply true that describing what you see to others has to do with expanding vision. If I don’t share what I’m seeing, then my eyes wax dim. If I let out what I am letting in, like breathing, then my eyes wax brighter.

In this lifetime for me, so far, I have deeply let in and let out several things; Christianity, and being a missionary and teacher within that; a 23 year marriage; raising two daughters; and a 28 year entrepreneurial vision and effort at a contracting business; are the big ones that come in the moment. I needed to live through each of these stories, in real time, in order to feel and heal….in order to feel and heal some more, in order to, you guessed it, to feel and heal some more.

I deeply believe that what you have yet to see, and what I have yet to see, makes for an adventure that’s deeper than any adventure story we’ve ever read or seen in a movie. What you and I have yet to see is why we create and are drawn to stories.

​Visit soulfullheart.com for more articles and information about the SoulFullHeart healing process.

Throwing Caution To The Wind: Uncovering What You Really Want

Published on by Raphael AwenLeave a comment

By Wayne Vriend

You may want a better job, or a more reliable car, or a car that says you are really cool, or the latest smart phone, or some new clothes, or a new friend, or your spouse or mate to change in some way. But if you were to take a look at whatever it is that you want and to ask yourself if there is a deeper need underneath the surface want or need, what do you think you might discover?

As you ask this question, try not to judge the the surface want or need as either vainly superficial or justifiably necessary. This way of judging your needs, both approving or disapproving of them, is all part of hiding from the desires and needs that are at the root of them.

Maybe the deeper want or desire is something like hunger for approval from others, or being noticed. Maybe it is a sense of self importance that you are craving. Maybe it goes deeper still to a need to feel Divine approval or love. These are all real human needs. I like being noticed and feeling that my life is important, and being approved by others I respect feels really good too.

What you and I really want is our lifeline in a sea of drowning humanity. Your deeper desires are keys to who you are at a deep level.

I’d rather feel genuinely important than rely on a physical object like a smartphone or a car, or an emotional object like my role or status in society, that does such a poor job of affording me any consistent feelings of self love.

Genuine human need is what underlies vanity and even hideous barbarism. All of us would behave the same way if our needs were being unmet in the same way, and if our present life and past life experiences were similiar.

So, what is that YOU really want?

It’s hard to know isn’t it? If you knew what you really wanted, you wouldn’t stumble along pursuing lesser wants whose fulfillments seem so short lived, and oftentimes cause deep hurt? Would you?

Most people do what they have been enculturated to do with this “problem” of desire. That is to kill it, or control it, or to manage it, so it doesn’t cause problems and pain.

We’ve made desire itself to be the bad guy. But the truth is that the very essence of being human and being alive is to have wants, is to desire, and being the most alive is to have the strongest wants and desires. What condition is your ‘wanter’ in? Dead people are people who no longer need or want anything.  Dead people don’t look longingly in storefront windows and they can’t be sold sex, or ice cream, or a career.

I sincerely believe that the root problems of our aches and pains in life, physically, emotionally and spiritually can be traced back to having a wanter that has been neglected and is in poor shape. Just as it requires a healthy metabolism to shed the weight your body no longer needs, so it requires strong healthy desire to let go of the things that you need to, and are ready to, in order to make room for the new things you really need and desire.

Maybe the definitive expression of vulnerability itself, is to feel the need for something that you don’t yet have access to, or control.

You have to in fact work to get it. You have to do the work of drawing it to yourself. This isn’t actually as hard as it sounds though. Doing work that is fun is what you did as a child without realizing it. You called it ‘play’ in fact. You gave all that you had in terms of time and effort and resources to get what you wanted, and you did it for the fun of it. Your parents may have questioned the appropriateness of your passion, or feared you ending up in a pile of disappointment, but not you. You went all out. You couldn’t live with yourself if you didn’t. Any hurts you encountered along the way, you were sure to recover from. You threw caution to the wind.

So what happened since then? You were told a host of things, in language and tone that was foreign to you, such as: ‘that isn’t really a responsible way to live; money doesn’t grow on trees; you need to care not just for yourself; work should come before play; responsibility is being grown up.’ You were told a whole bunch of things designed by nearly dead people with nearly dead wanters who needed to dim the light of your wanter; who in fact needed to sacrifice your alive reality on the altar of their dark deadness. They needed you to tone down in order to not feel the pain of their chosen deadness. They needed you to live as a medication to their deadness. Hence the gospel of putting others needs before your own.

What happened is that you just had the permission to be childlike in this way robbed from your adult reality. I’d like to see it given back to you. I’d like to be around more people like you who ache to return back to this authentic way of being human. Humanity is depending on people like you to take back what you had, what is in fact native to you, but that you lost.

This is the harder work, but it too can be done with all the seriousness of a child at play, with Divine help and guidance, and with deep and lasting rewards that no man can ever take from you.

If my words resonate with you, and you know that getting help with this kind of a life change is part of what you really want, I’d be honored to help you. I’d get to have a lot of fun helping you and uncovering the parts of you that hold your deepest desires. But only if that is what you really want! The deepest cost isn’t the time, or the money, or the effort. The deepest cost is enduring the process as well as finding the willingness to let go of what you in fact don’t really want, but are only presently attached to.

I know of no greater bravery, and I see its’ potential in you!

​Visit soulfullheart.com for more articles and information about the SoulFullHeart healing process.